Ideal living

[beccaelizabeth]

I have been thinkin about how social groups are set up in stories, and the patterns that keep coming up over and over.
Obviously when I filter to OTPs there's a lot of romance
but
there's also a Team.

Might be a crew or a pack or a scoobie gang, different ways to frame the same thing, but in stories you get like a half a dozen people that work together, probably live together, and have decided those are Their People who they are Keeping.

And fic goes harder for that then canon. We get story in five to seven year chunks, and the cast often rotates out, so you might have a different Team by the end even though they've kept the same identity. Avengers or Justice League have so many rosters over time. Legends are down to three originals. Change is.

But fic is forever, so, like with Big Finish revisiting every TARDIS team there ever is, in fanfic Team is forever.

I'm thinking humans have rearranged their lives in ways that leave us wanting. Like, work chooses our Team. Which is weird. We don't choose each other. Group projects in school on up, there's order imposed from outside, and we don't get to choose on the basis of reliability or if we actually like people.

And I'm not calling this trope found family today, because family has gone weird and small lately and if you have a whole half a dozen people in your family they probably donlt live together or see each other every day. So we're looking in stories for something more enduring and welcoming.



So then I started thinking, how do you even recruit a Team?

Like, if you think about it, it's weird how often the mentor that brings the team together becomes the corrupt boss they have to rebel against. Story does not like bosses or people with a plan. Choosing people for their utility rather than accepting them as is does not endear one to the story.

Even though if the adventure party lacks essential roles they're not going to survive long enough to bond anyways.



But if you want to make a Team then it's either get thrown together by circumstance and turn out to survive it, or some kind of six person almost dating scenario, with added... job interview?

Seems awkward.



And the roles that keep turning up in stories include the one that cooks and the one that repairs and the one that does first aid and maybe an aesthetics specialist? Like practical stuff that comes up a lot. But also there is The Rich One, because if the group doesn't have The Rich One then they're not going to have a place to all live together. Or like there's the Lair but someone has to install plumbing and security systems.

Or pretty often there's the one with the ship. The one with the ship chooses a crew, but then if the crew doesn't choose them back the crew have a ship and an enemy. Seldom does the crew just quit and find a different ship. I can think of several examples of the crew just keeping the ship and :-p to the owner, but not so many of :-p and leaving.





Starting a Team is tricky though. Advanced social skills. Getting half a dozen people to choose you back.

And it's not only like making regular friends, because the groups I have in mind have romantic partners come and go but the Team is more important. Quitting the Team to move across the country is a big decision to be discussed with the Team. No work opportunity is superior to commitment to the Team.


Humans just want their people.

But the world is not set up to facilitate that.




... so now I'm thinking about worlds with Pack or superhero teams where they're common enough to be normal, and how the laws and so forth would be set up there...




... also I'm thinking how I could get half a dozen people whose skills combine to make functioning house. That would be neat...

Comments

[baronjanus]

it takes a village

[beccaelizabeth]

*nods*

[lokifan]

That's a really interesting point - I never thought about it before but we do like our Teams.